The present invention concerns devices for safekeeping, carrying, organization and ready access to numerous financial documents in varied categories, and particularly to such documents which an investor naturally accumulates over an extended period of time, which may often be one to two years or more. The device can avoid the considerable waste of time and effort that can be required at brokerage firms in providing duplicate documents when an investor loses such documents as a result of inadequate home record keeping devices and procedures.
An individual investor who holds a number of investments over an extended period of time naturally accumulates varied financial documents, any of which may be important to the investor in making investment decisions, and in financial planning and tax return preparation. Typical categories of such documents include monthly account statements from the investor's brokerage firm, mutual fund statements, retirement account statements and summaries, year end tax reporting statements, stock purchase/sale confirmation slips, and various kinds of memoranda and reports, such as quarterly reports of corporations in which the investor holds stock. These documents may also include, for example, corporate notices about stock splits, rights offerings, tender offers, bond calls, and redemptions.
Many investors are naturally uncertain as to which of these numerous documents should be kept for an extended time, and which need not be. There is a need for a means to inform the investor as to which of such documents need be kept for future reference, and to assist the investor in maintaining the documents.
Many individual investors have no adequate record keeping and filing system at home for maintaining such a variety of documents in a readily accessible form. Even when needed documents can be found, often considerable searching is necessary, due to the haphazard nature of many personal home "filing" systems. Important documents often become lost, sometimes with serious consequences, and at minimum occasioning the considerable inconvenience of obtaining replacement copies, when this is possible, which often can involve extensive searching at an investment firm.
When the individual investor prepares to meet with a broker, accountant or other financial or tax advisor, typically at the office of the broker, accountant or other advisor, the investor attempts to gather up and bring those documents which might be needed during the meeting. But often the financial advisor may raise some additional issue which the investor had not considered while gathering the documents thought to be needed for the meeting, an issue requiring reference to documents left at home. This results in the inconvenience of further delay while the investor obtains the additional documents, and may require an additional meeting with the advisor at a later time. Moreover, if the investor is making investment decisions on a short time basis, requiring quick reaction to rapidly changing market conditions, such delays can be costly as well as inconvenient.
So there is a need for an easily carried device which can hold all of the kinds of financial documents which the investor is likely to need in making investment decisions, and in responsively communicating with a broker or other financial advisor.
There is moreover clearly a need for such a device which possesses a very readily understood means for organizing and labelling the various categories of financial documents involved, so that the investor will correctly file individual documents as they are received, and so that any particular document needed may be very quickly and easily retrieved, when the investor is meeting with a financial advisor, or needs to make quick reference to a document for any reason.
And there is obviously a need for such a device which allows an investor to carry such documents from place to place, for example between home and a broker's office, in a physically secure manner. That is, such a device which provides means for preventing any of the documents from inadvertently falling out of the device during transit between home and the brokerage firm.
Since the investor may be an individual who makes investment decisions and receives financial advice only on an infrequent basis, there is also a need for such a device which may be folded into a compact form for storage, and kept in a readily accessible and easily remembered place in the home during periods when the documents are not needed.
Because brokerage firms and other financial institutions may benefit from providing such a device to customers, in customer good will and by facilitating accessibility of customer documents needed during meetings of customers with advisors from said institutions, and by preventing the loss of documents, there is also a need for such a device which affords a means for an institution providing such a device for customers, to affix its name conspicuously to the device, for marketing purposes. The investor may show the device to friends who may be impressed by it, and possibly be more inclined to patronize an institution which provides such a helpful device to its customers.
Although various patents disclose containers for holding documents, as disclosed in the Information Disclosure Statement filed with the present application, none of these devices offer a combination of features suitable for meeting all of the needs described above.
To meet these needs, applicants' present invention provides a compactly foldable device in a notebook-binder format, having numerous labelled containments for described categories of documents, each adequate to hold numerous documents in a given category, which may be securely fastened when folded to prevent inadvertent loss of documents when being carried. The device may also be labelled on the front and on the spine with the name of the financial institution providing the device to a customer.